1. Field:
The disclosure relates generally to automating sequential cross-application operations and, more specifically, to automating operations to repetitively transfer data from one application to another.
2. Description of the Related Art
The proposed technique automates and implements a more timely and efficient process of integrating applications “on the fly,” especially for sequential and repetitive clipboard operations from one application to another. An interactive integration feature is provided to rapidly integrate data between applications. This includes both transferring data and modifying the data being transferred.
A clipboard is a software tool that can be used for short-term data storage for data transfer between applications commonly used in “copy and paste” operations. Typically, it is part of a graphical user interface (GUI) environment implemented as a temporary data buffer accessible by most applications in the GUI environment. Clipboard operations are very time consuming and error-prone when many operations must be performed in sequence to select and transfer repetitive portions of data. Cross-application data transfer operations transferring data from one application to another application using clipboard operations often take a long time to implement and are subject to a high error rate. Other techniques, besides use of a clipboard, may be time consuming to configure and set up. These techniques can include setting up an import process to transfer data to a proper location and in a proper format, or a screen-scraping process to detect and copy data from a display screen. Prior methods attempting to automate the transfer process to repeat a sequence of steps to transfer multiple portions of data between applications are difficult to initiate and set up. Also, the prior art methods lack compatibility between applications from different software companies.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that takes into account at least some of the issues discussed above, as well as possibly other issues.